


Drops

by vogue91



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 05:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13897116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Love... a concept she had analysed a few times, and never positively. Love was something blinding, something that deprived men and women of their common sense, slave to an entity that they couldn’t control.





	Drops

In the acquiescence of the Sun, that escaped powerless in front of the darkness, she saw somehow Mr. Darcy.

They had the same light, ready to succumb any moment to leave room to a less noble image of themselves, but just as charming.

That day, the sun was covered in a thick layer of grey clouds, but in some way she couldn’t understand, it still managed to shine through a part of his brilliance, as a feeble light of hope. And it was the latter that she couldn’t see in the man.

She had been walking through the woods for hours now, but it was like tiredness wasn’t capable of finding her. Too many things were confused in her mind, the images overlapped untidily. She closed her eyes, leaning against the wet trunk of a tree.

She smiled briefly thinking at the state of her clothes after an afternoon under the rain, and to the disapproving gaze she would’ve received from the uptight Mr. Collins.

That slight grimace of veiled irony died immediately when the images turned grimmer. When her thoughts flew to the face stained in shadow of Darcy himself. When she remembered his words, as if they were forever engraved inside of her.

And she wasn’t so bewildered by what he had told her, but by his face while the words slipped confusedly from his lips, as if he himself couldn’t truly catch the meaning of them.

It was the face of a man aware of what he wanted, but who felt defeated in admitting it. She saw in him the signs of the rout, of the miserable crack appeared on the invisible armour the man wore.

That crack from which he had let his true essence flow free, and the man he had been before giving up on living, before disillusion and pain turned him into ice.

She had felt that personality hiding behind a stone mask the very same moment she had first saw him. She had, nonetheless, set aside any justification for his attitude when she had realized that the man’s words could too easily turn into pure poison for whomever was not in his good graces.

She started walking again, relishing the very same rain that should’ve annoyed her. That afternoon, that was slowly turning into evening, had in those single raindrops her reason for clarity. The purification, as if all of her thoughts had been washed from any qualms she felt about him. Water was washing her eyes, giving her a new view of the circumstances, and new feelings about Mr. Darcy.

 _Love..._ a concept she had analysed a few times, and never positively. Love was something blinding, something that deprived men and women of their common sense, slave to an entity that they couldn’t control.

Yet, somehow she would’ve liked to understand it. She had unexpectedly found herself desiring to possess the same light oozing from Jane’s eyes when she talked about Mr. Bingley.

She made a little refined grimace, and her features hardened when she thought that Mr. Darcy had stolen that light from her, as if human lives for him were nothing but a game for his own amusement.

She couldn’t lie to herself, she had sworn her despise for the man, she wasn’t going to let his words change even a detail of that hatred. But... the explanations given from Mr. Darcy were vague, in her minds there was an echo of sentences that made no sense at all, not according to her knowledge of the facts. And Elizabeth was starting to wonder whether at least for him there was a shade of truth in what he had confessed. That he hadn’t let himself been driven by some absurd guilt, if he wasn’t actually delirious.

Drops stained her face, and she enjoyed herself thinking they were those tears she couldn’t cry. Tears that Mr. Darcy was never going to deserve, tears that pushed to come out, but stopped by the girl’s lucidity; she didn’t feel ready yet to give in to something that she couldn’t understand.

There were too many questions the man should have answered, too many actions that needed a completely convincing explanation.

She went back to Rosings with a low stride, without really wanting it. That place was drenched in the same presumptuousness that distinguished _him_ , and from which Elizabeth felt suffocated. She wasn’t born to stand all those invisible chains; she was to always wear her best smile, to never restrain from showing her joy.

She didn’t see how she could ever be fitting for Mr. Darcy, whose face wasn’t passed by a smile since the longest time. And yet something inside told her it wasn’t too late, that she could’ve become the weapon to make some serenity rise again in the soul of that grim man, to give him back all he had lost, anew, as if just cleansed by the rain.

She went inside the house of Mr. Collins, welcomed by her friend with a stare both scolding and amused.

“Elizabeth! You’re soaked!” pointed out Charlotte, handing her right away something to dry her up.

“I’m perfectly aware of it, Charlotte. But who said it’s something so bad?” Elizabeth answered, distracted. Mrs. Collins looked at her and shook her head, at all worried for the expression in her friend’s eyes, convinced she was lost in one of her meaningless reasoning, in one of those images that her mind was used to produce.

“The mud on your shoes says that, Lizzy.” she said, with a smile. The young Bennet shrugged.

“Forgive me, Charlotte, I will clean that up.” Elizabeth answered, without losing that absorbed look that still bore with it the magic of the woods, of those places that had much confused her in such few hours.

“I will, it’s not a problem. Instead, go rest. You look tired.” she advised, staring bewildered at the girl leaving the room, without saying another word.

 

~

 

When she read Mr. Darcy’s letter, Elizabeth felt almost like fainting.

It was like seeing both her dreams and her nightmares blending in an infernal dance.

She ran outside the house, still unable to cry, but always finding the right ally in the rain, that since the day before had not ceased to fall, relentless.

Once again submerged in the trees, once again with her mind troubled by the thousands of thoughts that overlapped in it, confusing her. A proposal, the real face of a man and _too many_ uncomfortable truths, that’s what those two days had given her. She didn’t feel capable to face all that, not without someone to give her those certainties she needed.

Mr. Wickham was surely a charming man, and he had looked sincerely noble in his intentions, while a whole other was her opinion about Mr. Darcy.  Still, she felt unexplainably tempted by putting her trust in the latter, as clear this option appeared as absurd.

She had spent her years following mind and instinct, but know she was suffocated by the silent scream of her heart.

She looked around. Rosings was unreal in her peace, under that storm that brought an immortal magic with it.

Nothing could happen that she couldn’t control, not there, not if she had done what she felt she should have. She stopped running, feeling nevertheless that the road to walk was not over yet.

She raised her eyes, greeting the first ray of sun that she had saw since she was in that place. She chose determined to take it as a sign, the sign of a turning point. Rain had stopped abruptly and so had done the flow of her thoughts. They weren’t clear, still, but they all pointed in the same direction.

She needed Mr. Darcy. But not right away. First, she chose to free her mind from troubles and enjoying the magic of the woods, until it would’ve lasted, still not ready to give in to rationality.

Reason was the last thing she needed that afternoon in Rosings, when things had worn clothes all new.

And, she had to admit it, illogically charming. 


End file.
